


Sometimes

by quigonejinn



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-03 07:25:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Response to prompt by casterlys for "katniss everdeen, others, catching fire AU: quarter quell doesn’t require old victors, so katniss becomes a mentor"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes

Response to prompt by [casterlys](http://kolms.livejournal.com/18020.html?thread=242788#t242788): **katniss everdeen, others, catching fire AU** : quarter quell doesn’t require old victors, so katniss becomes a mentor

Originally posted [3/27/2012 to ficathon](http://kolms.livejournal.com/18020.html?thread=770660#t770660)

 

What does Katniss expect? Effie might have suggested that they come on stage; it would have been standard in Districts that didn't have Haymitch as the only mentor for years and years. Nevertheless, Effie is vague on the topic, and Katniss takes it as permission to sit in the train and stare out the left-hand windows out at the forest during the Reaping. Peeta paces the length of the car, forward, then back, arms crossed hard over his chest. Haymitch is off drinking: quarter-quells are not good times for him, especially since Snow announced a double Reaping. Four from each district, two boys. Two girls.

There were complaints about it being a repeat of the second-quarter quell, but nobody in the car says a thing as the year's Tributes arrive at the platform. They can hear Effie's voice almost before they can see her hair. Ninety yards. Fifty yards. Neither of them wanted to watch if they wouldn't have the right to volunteer. "Older kids at least," Peeta says, squinting down the track. It's late afternoon, so the sun is coming from that direction, blazing behind the backs of the tributes so that he can't see their faces. "Around our age. The boys, at least, are big. Not my brothers." His voice shakes a little with relief. 

"Can you see the girls yet?" Katniss's own voice feels harsh. 

"Yes," Peeta says. "The girls are too tall to be Prim." 

Effie's high pitched Capitol-modified voice stands out clearly; none of the Tributes are saying a word, but despite herself, Katniss looks up boys come aboard. A big seventeen year old that Peeta knows, oldest in his family and already working in the mines for three years to earn because his father was injured in an explostion. 

And -- 

And also -- 

As she comes down the aisle, Effie refuses to meet Katniss's eyes.

...

The boy who had worked in the mine ignores Peeta's advice and tries for some of the goods at the Cornucopia; he dies in the initial frenzy at the Cornucopia. On the third day, a pack of hyena muttations drag Madge out of the cave where she had been hiding and maul her badly; Katniss spends a solid five minutes frozen on the couch, but then stands up, asks Effie to contact Cinna to dress her, and follows Peeta out that night to a circuit of parties, drinks, meeting people in an effort to buy Madge medication. She listens to jokes, lets people buy her drinks. The parachute arrives in the morning, but it turns out the hyena have poison teeth, and they only bought medication for the wounds, not to draw the poison out. 

On the fifth day, Gale finds her, trembling and feverish and slits her throat in an act of mercy. That afternoon, a career tribune spears Gale through the throat with a javelin. Katniss screams and screams; eventually, she lets Peeta put his arms around her, and they weep together, but Cinna comes before nightfall and has his team dress both of them. 

"Him," Peeta says and points across the room. His eyes are like stones in his face. "The third-richest man in the Capitol." 

Katniss walks over to him, drink in hand, wearing the same dress that she wore on stage with Caesar on her first appearance with him; later, when she is alone with the rich man in a darkened room, she brings the fingers of his left hand to her lips. 

"There is no drinkable water left," she says. "Let me convince you to buy some purification tablets." 

He slides his hand downward. 

The remaining girl from District 12 is the third-to-last to die and is crushed under a rockslide. 

When the Capitol is overthrown, Coin lives, but it takes Coriolanus Snow two days to die by Katniss's hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Gale mercy-killing Madge was the idea of [destronomics](http://archiveofourown.org/users/destronomics/pseuds/destronomics).


End file.
